JavaLand has always been one of my absolute favourite conferences. With one exception, I have been to every one of them. JavaLand 2025 was, as last year, located at Nürburgring. The location is good, but not perfect, which the attendee numbers show. Next year’s JavaLand will be back in a theme park again.

My talk at JavaLand this year was Boost Your Performance and Developer Productivity with Jakarta EE 11. I gave an overview of Jakarta EE 11, showed some demos, and gave an indication for where Jakarta EE 12 is headed.

Since JavaLand was hosted at Nürnburgring, the activities naturally were car-related, with the Ring Kartbahn where we could race in electric solar powered go-karts. Eclipse Foundation had a booth this year with an unusual choice of swag…expect to see Jakarta EE branded towels throughout Europe this summer. At the Tuesday evening party, we had some fun with the social media wall. Check out the Bluesky handles for Andres, Benjamin, Brian, Carmen, Alina, and myself.

JavaOne 2025 returned to the Bay Area as a standalone event. It was held at the Oracle Conference Center at the Oracle Campus in Redwood Shores. While significantly smaller than it used to be, it was an excellent revival of the conference. The event team managed to create an extremely friendly feel-good vibe. Coffee was served all day, and Duke was there. Duke even rocked the dance floor to the Nullpointers at the attendee party. On Wednesday morning at 6:30 AM, a surprisingly large group of attendees met for the JavaOne morning run.

Jakarta EE was well represented by Tanja and myself. We had a booth on the exhibition floor located between our friends at Microsoft and Payara. Lots of attendees came by our booth, which resulted in good conversations. It was such a blast to meet all the community members there.

I had a packed room with standing room only for my talk titled The Evolution of Enterprise Java with Jakarta EE 11 and Beyond. The talk takes us through the past, present, and future of Enterprise Java, with an obvious focus on Jakarta EE. It has some cool code demos and some fun anecdotes from the past.

Mark your calendars for March 2026 for the next edition of JavaOne!

Devnexus 2025 is a wrap!. This conference, run by Atlanta Java User Group is one of my absolute favourite conferences. There is so much going on and the hallway track is so fun. It has to be with such an amazing speaker lineup.

This year, as the previous years, we had a track entirely dedicated to Jakarta EE as well as a Jakarta EE booth. My amazing Eclipse Foundation colleagues, Carmen and Shabnam, did an exceptional job making sure that everything with the booth went smoothly. In addition to this, Eclipse IDE and Eclipse GlassFish were also represented with a booth on their own.

I had the pleasure of having a talk together with Rustam where we talked about how to leverage CRaC with Jakarta EE. It was a fun talk with lots of bad jokes and really cool technology. Everything backed up by a hands on demo. Check out the slides for more about the talk

As always, we went out for a #runWithJakartaEE morning run both days of the conference. This is the best way to get started before a long conference day. Some complain that it is early to go for a run at 6:30 am, but usually they thank me afterwards. The afternoons at conferences are usually so packed with activities so it is rarely possible to make it happen then.

Another cool thing at this year’s Devnexus was to participate in a live recording of an episode the Off Heap podcast. The topic for this episode was Open Source Foundations, and we had a panel consisting of Erin from Commonhaus Foundation, Bob from Apache Software Foundation, and me from Eclipse Foundation. We had some great discussions, so make sure to listen to the episode when it airs.

It has become my tradition to summarize the conference year in a post on New Year’s Eve. If 2023 was a good conference year, then 2024 was even better! I spoke at or participated in more than 40 events across the World. I traveled to 31 different countries and visited 91 cities throughout the year. What makes me especially proud is that I was able to speak at even more Java User Groups this year than ever before. Let’s try to make it even more next year!

You can see a complete list of all the events and links to my blog posts from the events below. All this information, as well as a continuously updated list of upcoming events, can be found on my Developer Advocate page on the Jakarta EE Website.

Name	Location	Date	Blog Post
Ya!vaConf	Warsaw 🇵🇱	Dec 11	Ya!vaConf 2024
JakartaOne Livestream	online 🌐	Dec 3	JakartaOne Livestream 2024
Porto Tech Hub	Porto 🇵🇹	Nov 26	Porto Tech Hub 2024
Brno JUG	Brno 🇨🇿	Nov 20	Brno JUG 2024
Prague JUG	Prague 🇨🇿	Nov 19	Prague JUG 2024
JUG Torino	Turin 🇮🇹	Nov 12	JUG Torino 2024
JUG Milano	Milan 🇮🇹	Nov 11	JUG Milano 2024
SFSCON	Bolzano 🇮🇹	Nov 8-9	SFSCON 2024
DevCon	Bucharest 🇷🇴	Nov 6	DevCon 2024
JJUG CCC Fall	Tokyo 🇯🇵	Oct 27	JJUG CCC Fall 2024
Open Community for Java	Mainz 🇩🇪	Oct 22-24	Open Community for Java 2024
Seattle JUG	Seattle, WA 🇺🇸	Oct 15	Seattle JUG 2024
Community Over Code	Denver, CO 🇺🇸	Oct 7-10	Community Over Code 2024
Devoxx Morocco	Marrakech 🇲🇦	Oct 2-4	Devoxx Morocco 2024
Berlin Expert Days	Berlin 🇩🇪	Sep 19-20	Berlin Expert Days 2024
Jalapeño	Puerto Vallarta 🇲🇽	Sep 14-15	Jalapeño 2024
St. Louis JUG	St. Louis, MO 🇺🇸	Sep 12	St. Louis JUG 2024
Java Metroplex User Group	Dallas, TX 🇺🇸	Sep 11	Java Metroplex User Group 2024
Jacksonville JUG	Jacksonville, FL 🇺🇸	Sep 10	Jacksonville JUG 2024
Triangle JUG	Durham, NC 🇺🇸	Sep 9	Triangle JUG 2024
LAOUC Community Tour 2024	Asunción 🇵🇾	Aug 23	LAOUC Community Tour 2024 2024
JCrete	Kolymvari 🇬🇷	Jul 22-26	JCrete 2024
JConfDominica	Santiago de los Caballeros 🇩🇴	Jul 19-20	JConfDominica 2024
DWX	Nürnberg 🇩🇪	Jul 1-5	DWX 2024
DevBCN	Barcelona 🇪🇸	June 13-14	DevBCN 2024
Spring I/O	Barcelona 🇪🇸	May 30-31	Spring I/O 2024
JPrime	Sofia 🇧🇬	May 28-29	JPrime 2024
Berlin JUG	Berlin 🇩🇪	May 22	Berlin JUG 2024
GeeCON	Kraków 🇵🇱	May 15-17	GeeCON 2024
JCON EUROPE	Köln 🇩🇪	May 13-16	JCON EUROPE 2024
GIDS	Bangalore 🇮🇳	April 23-26	GIDS 2024
Devnexus	Atlanta, GA 🇺🇸	April 9-11	Devnexus 2024
JDevSummitIL	online 🌐	April 4	JDevSummitIL 2024
Voxxed Days Bucharest	Bucharest 🇷🇴	Mar 27-29	Voxxed Days Bucharest 2024
Belgian JUG	Hasselt 🇧🇪	Mar 19	Belgian JUG 2024
Javaforum Malmø	Malmö 🇸🇪	Feb 29	Javaforum Malmø 2024
ConFoo	Montreal 🇨🇦	Feb 21-23	ConFoo 2024
Philly JUG	Philadelphia, PA 🇺🇸	Feb 20	Philly JUG 2024
Jfokus	Stockholm 🇸🇪	Feb 5-7	Jfokus 2024
Portland JUG	Portland, OR 🇺🇸	Jan 31	Portland JUG 2024
Seattle JUG	Seattle, WA 🇺🇸	Jan 30	Seattle JUG 2024
Nashville JUG	Nashville, TN 🇺🇸	Jan 29	Nashville JUG 2024
JCP 25-year Anniversary Celebration	Mountain View, CA 🇺🇸	Jan 25	JCP 25-year Anniversary Celebration 2024

Happy New Year!
See You all in 2025!

The sixth edition of JakartaOne Livestream is a wrap! Last year, we started the tradition of creating a video for our Keynote. Here is a teaser for this Year’s video. You can see the full length version on the Jakarta EE YouTube channel. That is also where you will find all the excellent technical sessions. Everything will be made available as soon as possible.

Running a full day online conference like this is a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. I hope we are able to convey that feeling to those of you that watched, or watches the recordings.

JakartaOne Livestream is usually the last conference of the year for me, and I really enjoy these days in (usually) snowy Ottawa to end the year. This year, though, I have one more conference (Ya!vaConf) coming up next week in Warsaw before settling in for the Holidays.

I visited Porto once back in the ’90s when I was Interrailing (traveling by train on a relatively affordable ticket valid in most European countries) across Europe with some friends. But that was a while ago, so it was about time I returned.

The day before the conference, there was a speaker dinner at a local restaurant where we were served a variety of dishes from the local cuisine. It is always nice to meet new and old friends at dinners like this.

My talk Jakarta EE Meets AI was scheduled as one of the first talks after the opening keynote. It was very well attended and I had some interesting discussions afterwards.

Porto Tech Hub 2024 gathered over 1000 attendees at an awesome conference venue by the river. The exhibition hall was bustling with energy, especially in the coffee breaks between the sessions.

This was the 24th edition of the South Tyrol Free Software Conference (SFSCON) in Bolzano. I is a free event that attracts visitors mostly from Northern Italy, Austria and Switzerland. This year, there were about 1000 registered attendees.

All the sessions at the conference are 15-minute long lighting talks happening simultaneously in four session rooms. This means that there are lots of sessions during the day. In addition to my talk, I also presented Carmen’s talk since she wasn’t able to make it to the conference. First, I presented A Journey of Contribution and Collaboration in Open Source. This is a talk I have done a number of times before, but usually as a 30- or 45-minute session, but it also fits as a fast-paced 15-minute lightning talk.

Directly after my talk, Tanja presented Jakarta EE: Why and how to get involved in Open Source Software? Since Juan had his talk Enabling global interoperability among smart devices is only possible through Open Source, Eclipse Foundation were already well represented before I entered the stage for my last talk about Nurturing OpenJDK Distribution in Adoptium.

SFSCon is a nice conference and the format with only lightning talks fits it well. Due to to proximity to the University of Bolzano and the free tickets, there were lots of students among the attendees.

I have been to Bucharest several times speaking at various conferences. Devcon was a new experience, even if it is organized by the same team as some of the other ones I have spoken at. It is a two day conference with multiple tracks, or stages, that vary a little between the days. The Java Stage on Day 1 was in the big room, and gathered a pretty good crowd. I would estimate that the capacity was somewhere around 200, and the room was fairly full for all the talks during the day.

My talk Why Jakarta EE Matters to Spring – and Vice Versa was one of two Jakarta EE talks among the 7 talks on the Java Stage. Edwin Derks did the other one. Adding George Adams’ Adoptium talk, Eclipse Foundation projects were very well represented on the conference.

November is almost as busy as October conference-wise, so I was only able to attend the first day before heading to the next conference. DevCon is a well-organized conference, and I can see myself coming back to speak at it later as well.

It’s been five years since I last was in Tokyo, so it was about time to be back. Last time, I was there for the JCP EE Face-to-Face meeting as well as JJUG CCC 2019 Spring where I presented the Jakarta MVC specification. This time, at JJUG CCC 2024 Fall (I still haven’t figured out what the CCC stands for, but I am sure someone will educate me…), I gave an overview of Jakarta EE 11. I also added a demo of how to easily integrate AI in a Jakarta EE application using Langchain4j and CDI.

Even 30 million inhabitants, you can still find som quiet places in Tokyo. I had a wonderful morning run in the area around my hotel through small alleys, along rivers and in parks. Tokyo is really a collection of cities and villages all connected together with in impressive network of trains, subways, metros, and buses.

I was only on ground in a little more than 48 hours, but still got to experience a lot of the city. There is something going on all the time. And totally safe. you can (if you want) leave your mobile phone outside on a café table in a crowded area and it will still be there when you come back out after having purchased coffee inside. I don’t know any other major city anywhere in the world you would be able to do that.

Open Community for Java 2024 was a part of Open Community Experience (OCX), the revamped EclipseCon. EclipseCon has been going on with the same format for years, and it was in need of a brush-up. This was definitely achieved with OCX. The conference venue was fantastic and the recurring feedback was that it felt like a younger edition of EclipseCon. It don’t think that was because of the attendees as there were at least as much grey hair as usual, but more a result of the hipper vibe of the venue. The food options were excellent, and there was always access to water, soft drinks, tea, coffee, and a selection of snacks.

Since EclipseCon never really was a Java conference directed at the larger Java community (don’t get me wrong, there has always been a lot of Java content at EclipseCon, but mostly related to the various Eclipse Foundation projects, the IDE in particular), it was a bit hard to create awareness of Open Community for Java, The number of attendee could definitely have been higher, but all the talks got a decent number of attendees at least. Those that showed up had an excellent selection of high-quality talks to chose from. For those not able to attend, the talks will be available on the Eclipse Foundation YouTube channel shortly.

I did my talk Why Spring Matters to Jakarta EE – And Vice Versa on the first day of the conference. It is a good talk, if I should be so “unscandinavian” and say so. It gives a good overview of Jakarta EE and shows how the specifications overlap with Spring.

Never a conference without a morning run at least one of the days. This year, I got up at 6:30 and went for a run two of the three conference days. On Wednesday, I was joined by Daniel (I think he was motivated by the cool Jakarta EE running shirt), and on Thursday Gesine came along. This year, we had Jakarta EE branded running socks as one of the giveaways. I may have some of them to bring to future conferences if they manage to ship the leftovers to me after the event